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Jaspen - 10/6/2017 5:43:42 PM

Hello all,

 First of all, sorry for the poor English that I have.  I done the vacuum infusion for 10 years.  But I find that it was really difficult to make a perfect carbon parts by Resin Infusion. The reason is when leakage happened in fusion. Those bubbles were in between the layer of Carbon Fabric and Gel Coat which is not happy to see this.  Bascially it was unable to handle.  So I tried no Gel Coat for vacuum infusion. But how to fix the pin holes issue by post processing? Can I use XCR resin to spray after forming? I tried IN2 already. Its viscosity too low
Thanks all advise

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Jaspen - 10/9/2017 3:03:46 PM

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Matt (Staff) - 10/9/2017 8:12:31 AM

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Jaspen - 10/6/2017 5:43:42 PM

Hello all,

 First of all, sorry for the poor English that I have.  I done the vacuum infusion for 10 years.  But I find that it was really difficult to make a perfect carbon parts by Resin Infusion. The reason is when leakage happened in fusion. Those bubbles were in between the layer of Carbon Fabric and Gel Coat which is not happy to see this.  Bascially it was unable to handle.  So I tried no Gel Coat for vacuum infusion. But how to fix the pin holes issue by post processing? Can I use XCR resin to spray after forming? I tried IN2 already. Its viscosity too low
Thanks all advise

Hi Jaspen,

OK, so I think you already know that the most important thing to aim for is to do the infusion without any pin-holes. This is possible and all comes down to the quality of the vacuum bagging, especially how well the bag is sealed. If you really can't get your bags to seal properly (we could discuss why this might be) then you're right that it is better to do the infusion without any gelcoat because this will allow you to do remedial work on the part afterwards. We do have one customer who does use our XCR Epoxy Coating Resin to repair pin-holes on the surface of carbon fibre parts - in fact he does not use lacquer (or clear coat) but fixes the pin holes and coats the parts with the XCR resin. Another alternative is to use lacquer (clear coat) to fill the pin holes and coat the part. This is a bit of an art form and tends to require a number of coats with flatting in between.

Honestly, it's more important to spend the time learning to do the infusion without pin-holes rather then spend time fixing pin holes but if you do need to do it then both the XCR and also possibly multiple layers of lacquer (with flatting in between) will work.

I hope this helps, Matt

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Warren (Staff) - 10/9/2017 3:17:11 PM

The XCR would need to be manually applied to fill the pinholes.  You then would coat the whole panel in XCR and once cured, flat back the XCR and then polish back to a high gloss.  XCR is quite thick so spray application may well be very difficult to master.

As Matt says, finding the cure to the pinholes is the best bet.  If your bags are leak tight, then sometimes, keeping the resin feed open a little longer than you normally would - say an extra 30 seconds or so - allows extra resin into the part which ensures  all the carbon is FULLY wetted out and maybe fractionally resin rich meaning the chance of pinholes is minimised even further.